Another Day Out: The Lakes (part 1)

I’m writing this not from my usual base but from the Lake District, Penrith to be exact, and I’m here not just for the day but the night: sleeping over and going home tomorrow, leisurely.

I’m here for Life of a Mountain: Blencathra at the Rheged Centre, a report on which will follow later in the day. This is my first visit to Cumbria this year, and since the dreadful floods of the turn of the year, and it’s the best weather I’ve seen in all my previous visits. From the 6.00 am alarm, it’s been blue sky and cotton wool clouds, though they did sort of amass at one point en route, suggesting less dry weather ahead, which so far has not only failed to materialise, but also to look likely.

The travel has, as usual, been the torture. It usually is but today’s programme has been particularly fraught with traps for my usual paranoia: bus to Piccadilly Gardens, walk to Victoria Railway Station, train to Preston and Rail Replacement Coach, all to arrive four hours earlier than I need, but this is the only way into Penrith by public transport from Manchester today, hence the insanely early start.

The last changeover was the one giving my nerves most to work on but it was smooth as butter: four of us on a single-decker coach, bound for Penrith. Actually, it’s all gone well, with the only hitch being right at the start: the bus was five minutes late. Of course it was: it’s only the first bus of the day, four stops out of the bus station, 7.19am, what on Earth made me think it might be on time?

I was feeling a bit frazzled then, and a lot more now as yesterday didn’t go well. Between the dreadful news about Darwyn Cooke and an unexpected exchange of texts in the evening, the implications of which I’m still trying to analyse (private stuff, people, not unrelated to a recent post), I lost it last night, couldn’t even summon up the energy to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, or even the voting (I haven’t missed that in over a quarter century and I still don’t even know the answer as I write), and of course fretted about waking up in time today.

As a result of which I beat the alarm by at least fifteen minutes, hence the feeling a bit fuzzy round the edges by now.

But the drive up was greatly enjoyable. From Lancaster, Morecambe Bay and the southernmost fells came into view, and from a coach you can see much further than the near ground level of a car. I could soon see from friendly old Black Combe through to Dow Crag and the Old Man, whilst north of Lancaster, more and more fells and valleys became visible, until I could see the whole panoply of ridges across South and East Lakeland from Dow Crag to the fells east of Longsleddale. Not all of it all at once (bloody trees fringing the M6) but it’s the longest and widest panorama of the fells that I’ve been in much too young.

North of the M6 summit there was another vista to survey (not that I am denigrating anything east of Tebay Gorge, which was looking very attractive as well, but it’s not the Lakes, is it?) Again, it’s a long time since I’ve seen these fells so clearly and so well lit. I quickly identified Swindale and Mardale (always a breeze when Kidsty Pike is visible), only to realise that I couldn’t properly see the former from the south and that what I was looking at was Wet Sleddale, which I have never visited. It looked good from this angle for once.

The cloud was high enough that not of the tops were obscured, yet the air made everything look pale, low and distant. Glad as I was to see so much after so much time, I couldn’t help but feel a certain sadness. There was no intimacy to the views, and that is what I’ve lost. The fells and I are no longer intimate friends but former neighbours, mindful of our past closeness, but gone our separate ways.

Enough of that! I’m here now, and in fifteen minutes time I’m out to the bus to the Rheged Centre. Time to find out what really happened to Stuart Maconie and Edd Byrnes on Sharp Edge…